


A Giant Mistake (Undone)

by NightsMistress



Category: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Fix It Fic, Gen, Paradox Ending: A Giant Mistake, action adventure, background Serah/Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-06 07:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5408441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serah and Noel aren't meant to die fighting giants. There is always a way to avert a bad future, and fix the timeline to what it should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Giant Mistake (Undone)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



> Hi prosodiical! Thank you for such a wonderful prompt; I had a great time thinking of how to write a continuation of A Giant Mistake.
> 
> A Giant Mistake is really interesting ending for me, because it's not until later on in the game that Serah and Noel realize that what Noel remembers doesn't necessarily have to be the true timeline. By implication in 400 AF the future of giants roaming the plains of Gran Pulse in an eternal war is averted, but we never got to see how! So that was fun to explore.
> 
> My thanks to steelneko, GrayShadows and kurushi for their fantastic work. All errors are my own.

In a time that seemed utterly devoid of life, Serah and Noel were killing giants. They were brutal battles, all the more because Serah only needed to look up to see why they had to fight more efficiently than ever before; Fang and Vanille’s crystal pillar held Cocoon aloft in the sky and was visible from all parts of the Steppe.

After fighting and defeating their third giant, Serah and Noel decided to seek shelter. Noel had wanted to fight on, but Serah had insisted. If they were to defeat all the giants and save the pillar, they couldn’t get themselves killed fighting the fourth.

The task was looking all the more daunting now that the three of them had been in this time period for a few hours.

Their resting place that night was a shallow cave carved into a cliff, a short, albeit difficult, climb from the ground. The cave was so narrow that Serah was able to stretch out both arms and comfortably rest her palms against the cool, crumbling walls. The walls felt warm even through the reinforced cloth material of her gloves, but it was not the energy-sapping heat from outside, and it had the advantage of being too narrow a space for one of the battle machines to reach into and pluck her and Noel out. It was about as safe as anywhere else was in this time.

The sun was a dull cinder in the dust-choked sky, and even when it had been at its zenith it had cast strange shadows on the ground below. The air, for all that it was difficult to breathe, meant that the sunrises and sunsets were spectacular: sullen reds giving way to dusky purple and all the shades in between. The landscape below was the most unsettlingly beautiful thing Serah had seen, for all its starkness: the empty rolling Steppe of Gran Pulse, the lights of the war machines as they continued to roam the plains, and the emptiness of a world where few things lived.

Serah couldn’t hear Noel breathe, but she supposed that made sense. He had been trained as a hunter in a time beyond this one, where he was the last living person, and he would have learned how to breathe quietly. She thought her own breathing was far too loud, ragged and raucous in the still twilight air. Not that it mattered; the only things that could reach up this high were the giants, and Serah didn’t think they had ever noticed.

If she had been loud enough to be heard by giants, then Noel and Serah would have died on their first day in this terrible time.

She turned away from the sunset to look at Noel. Blood was drying on his temple and cheek from cuts sustained in the most recent attack, matting part of his hair down against the left side of his face. Serah had healed the underlying injury, but the blood remained, and they hadn’t found enough water to spare to wash it clean. The implications of that frightened her, but what hadn’t since she had resolved to chase after her sister?

“We should rest while we can,” Noel said. He sounded as tired as he looked, words clumsy and slow, and Serah resolved to make him sleep if she must.

“We should,” she agreed. “If we go back as far as we can, we can both sleep.”

“I’ll keep watch, kupo!” Mog chirped. Even he sounded subdued, though, and Serah didn’t think he would last the night either.

Fortunately, the cave narrowed further in, not enough to be claustrophobic but enough so that even a giant’s finger wouldn’t be able to reach them. Noel settled down between Serah and the cave opening, noble protector to the end. Serah curled up next to him, back pressed against his. Mog hovered above them both, holding his wand like a sword.

“Good night, kupo!”

“Good night, Mog,” Serah said.

Serah’s dreams were strange, even more so than the usual nonsensical jumble. She had been dreaming about the sea at Bodhum, one she hadn’t seen in years, and the way that the air smelled of salt and kelp. The memory brought tears to her eyes. New Bodhum had never had the same scent of home, not even in the ocean breeze.

She heard the crunch of heavy footsteps on sand and turned to see Lightning, dressed in armour and decorated in feathers. Worry pinched her brows, and her eyes seemed to have aged a lot more than the two years since Serah had last seen her sister. They were the eyes of someone who had seen all of time and hoped to avert it.

“Serah,” Lightning said. She sounded so sad as she reached out to touch Serah’s hair and smooth it away from her face, like she had after their mother died and she was telling Serah to be brave. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t steer you away from this fate.”

“It’s okay,” Serah said. She added ruefully, “I think we would have done it anyway. This is where the paradox led, right?”

“Do you have the courage to walk down this path to its end?”

“Yes,” Serah said. She raised her chin. “I want to save Vanille and Fang, and stop Cocoon from falling.”

“Then find a gate,” Lightning said.

“What?” Serah shook her head in bewilderment. “Lightning, what do you mean, find a gate?”

“You weren’t meant to be here. It’s my fault; I should have guided you better.”

Lightning sounded so drained, her words so heavy, like her guilt was crushing her. Serah wished there was a way to take the weight from her sister’s shoulders, but all she had was words and those had never gotten through to Lightning in the past. She tried anyway. “No, that’s not true. Noel and I chose to stay.”

Lightning shook her head. “You thought of it as being ‘leave and the world dies’, or ‘stay and fight to the end’.”

Serah nodded. That only seemed logical after all. Why else would the two of them be brought to that time, if not to stop the pillar from crumbling and save Cocoon?

“Serah, there is a third path. You can make sure that this future never happens.”

Serah took a step backward, her feet sinking and slipping in the sand. “What? We can? But Noel _recognises_ it,” she said. “It has to happen.”

“No, it doesn’t. Find a gate, and I’ll make sure you end up in a place where you can change the future to what it should be.”

Lightning sounded so sure, so certain that this was true. Serah would never doubt her sister — she had always managed to do the impossible for Serah — and if she said that she would be able to open a gate for Serah and Noel, despite their not having an artefact to open it, then the gate would open. All Serah and Noel had to do was to get to the gate in the first place. It was hard enough surviving, and it would be impossible to cut a path and reach a gate. But Lightning was doing the impossible for her.

It was time to return the favour.

“All right,” Serah said. “We’ll make it.”

“Good. Good luck.”

Something about that sounded terribly final. Lightning was looking at her as if she was trying to memorise every part of Serah’s face, like she had been gone for so long that she had almost forgotten it. Like she wanted to commit it to memory. As if she was going to go away for a very long time, and didn’t know when she would see Serah again.

“Lightning? I’ll see you soon, won’t I?”

“Yes,” Lightning said. It sounded like a lie, like when she was still Claire and she would whisper to Serah at night that their mother would be all right. It took Serah a long time to realise that her sister wasn’t telling these lies for Serah’s sake, but for her own.

Lightning wanted to see her, but she knew that she wouldn’t. Not for a while.

Serah smiled at her sister, bright and fierce. It was something she’d had practice in, ever since Lightning and Snow had disappeared. She couldn’t fool NORA, but Lightning needed to feel that Serah believed her lie. In a way, Serah did want to believe it was the truth. She nodded. “Then we’d better get to it.”

She woke up with a gasp into the velvety darkness. It must be after midnight, she thought, though it was hard to tell. Mog was sleeping in a small ball in the hollow between her chest and knees, his warm body nestled against her stomach. _Poor Mog,_ she thought. _You’re all worn out!_ She’d never really thought about whether it was tiring to be a weapon or not. Mog had never complained, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t wearing on him. If they were to make it to a gate and fix the timeline, she would have to remember to be more careful with him.

She could feel Noel’s gaze on her back, a twitchy half-knowledge that might one day be battle awareness like her sister’s. Serah wasn’t surprised that he was awake. Instead she was dismayed that she had woken him up.

“You all right?” Noel said quietly.

“Yeah, I think so,” Serah said.

“A place like this, it’s not surprising you’d have bad dreams,”

“Mm,” Serah said. She didn’t think that she would be sleeping again tonight. Instead, she sat up, gently easing Mog onto her lap. Noel sat up as well, and Serah leaned against him, her head resting on his shoulder.

They sat like that until Serah’s heart stopped thudding her chest. They might have stayed like that all night, if Serah hadn’t chosen to speak.

“Noel?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did the war start?”

To her relief, Noel didn’t laugh or try and fob her off by saying that it wasn’t a story he wanted to tell. He tilted his head in memory. “Let me think …”

Serah waited patiently. For all that Noel said that they were stories and legends, they seemed to be very accurate ones. She’d put as much faith in them than any history book; they’d proven to be that reliable.

“The legends say that people were afraid of Cocoon’s fall and fought about how to stop it. Some wanted the fal’Cie to come back and tried to resurrect them. Others built gigantic machines.” Noel sounded more comfortable now that he was explaining about past horrors rather than trying not to be vulnerable and scared.

“Like Atlas,” Serah mused.

“Exactly.” Noel pointed his finger in emphasis, a gesture that made Serah smile in spite of their terrible predicament. There was something so comforting about how animated Noel could be when caught up in his explanations. Then she looked outside, at the wasteland where once people had lived and loved, and the smile slipped from her face.

“So they fought until the machines and the monsters killed off everyone.”

“Every _thing_ ,” Noel corrected. “Plants die. The water stops flowing. The soil stops growing things. By my time all that’s left are whatever monsters can survive.”

“That’s terrible,” Serah sighed. “Wasn’t there anyone who tried to stop them?”

“There was one,” Noel said. “I don’t remember who they were, but the stories said that there was one voice who said that placing the fate of humanity in the hands of machines _or_ fal’Cie wasn’t what we were meant to do. Then they died. Each side blamed the other and the war started.”

“Hm,” Serah said. “That sounds familiar.”

“Yeah? How so?”

Serah shook her head. “It sounds like someone I knew once. It doesn’t matter. Is there truly no way to stop it?”

“I don’t think so,” Noel said. He shifted forward and turned so he could see her face. “Why do you ask?”

“I had a dream. Lightning was there, and she said that we had gone down the wrong path. That we shouldn’t be here. She said … that if we could find a gate, she would make sure that it would open for us.”

“A dream?” Noel sounded very dubious.

Serah poked him in the ribs with her finger and he yelped. “Hey, I dreamed about _you_ , didn’t I? And my sister. Maybe you should have a little faith in my dreams.”

Noel put up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right! So you had a dream that might be true. What do we do about it?”

“We’re going to fix the paradox and make sure this war never happens.”

Noel frowned the careful, incredulous frown he had when he thought that people were not making any sense but that he wasn’t sure how to say that in case it was another thing from the past he was unfamiliar with. “Serah,” he said slowly. “The war already happens. It’s part of the history from my time.”

“But don’t you see?” Serah said. From Noel’s expression, he didn’t, but there was something about the way he held his head that Serah thought he could be convinced. That he _wanted_ to be convinced. It was her turn to inspire him, like he had inspired her back in New Bodhum. She gazed at him intently as she spoke, willing him to believe her because she knew that she was right. “That’s why I know we have to make sure this war doesn’t happen. Didn’t you want a future with people in it?”

“Well, yeah, but …” Noel looked away, his jaw tensing, and his eyes dark and troubled.

“It’s okay,” Serah said, and took his hand in hers. “The pillar won’t fall. If we stop the war, we’ll make sure that none of this happens.”

Noel frowned, wary and hurt like a grieving child, before he shook it off.

“Moping around like this isn’t like me.” He grinned and raised his fist, and Serah bumped it with her own. She grinned herself at how silly the gesture felt, despite the fact that it was the most _right_ gesture they had. “I’m in.”

“Once the sun sets, we’ll set out?”

“Right.” Noel nodded in emphasis. “We’ve got your little friend here,” and he inclined his head at Mog, “And we’re tougher than a bunch of machines.”

“Yeah,” Serah said. She looked down at Mog. She was charmed to see that he clutched his wand even as he slept. “You know,” Serah said tentatively, “If we undo this, then …”

“I might forget more things?” Serah looked up to see Noel shake his head. “Not a problem. I’d rather forget about this war than wait for a giant to kill us.”

Sarah smiled crookedly. “Never lie down and wait to die, right?”

Noel returned her grin. “You got it.”

* * *

 They travelled by night whenever they could. The stars cast little light on their path and the ground was treacherous underfoot, prone to crumbling into sand or falling in on itself when weight was placed on it. Noel and Serah’s palms and knees were bloody and bruised from slipping and falling, but they always rose to their feet once again. Whether they pushed themselves up or pulled each other up, they tirelessly struggled back upright.

Fighting giants wasn’t feasible at the moment, not in the poor terrain. It was difficult enough during the day, where the sun cast strange shadows that tricked the eye. Under the feeble light of the moon and stars, they would end up dead at a giant’s hand before long and then no one would be able to save Cocoon from its fall.

It was hard though, to pass the giants in the cover of darkness and not try to fling an arrow or hurl a short sword into the crystals at the top of their heads. Serah’s trigger finger itched every time they tiptoed past a giant, and from the tense line of Noel’s shoulders when it was his turn to take point, he had the same urge. She didn’t, because it would be awful if she did and got Noel killed. She suspected that was why Noel hadn’t done it either.

Sometimes they had to step through the remains of less successful travellers, long bones fragmented and broken, skulls ground to sand. It was a chilling reminder of how thin the knife’s edge was between success and failure, and the magnitude of the consequences if they did not succeed.

By day they rested in deep caves too narrow for a giant to reach them, watching the terrible battle below them from where they had climbed in the ruddy light of dawn. The giants fought constantly, fighting any opponent they came across, including each other if that was all they had. All they did was fight and fight and _fight_. That was all they had been built for, and Serah was sickened as she watched.

Serah didn’t think she could watch another action movie with Snow, when she met up with him again. She had liked to watch them in part because Snow would sit still for two hours, arm slung around her shoulder, but she had also enjoyed the spectacle. She didn’t think she could do that now. She would remember the sight of impossibly tall giants trying to tear each other apart, the flat taste of the air, and the bitter taste of the water they had harvested and carried with them through the night.

The three of them slept whenever they could. At first they had alternated shifts — Serah sitting up with Mog and watching the sun reach its zenith, and then Noel for the afternoon. By the third days, they were too tired to set up shifts. By midmorning, they would crawl into the back of the cave and steal what sleep they could until dusk. Then they would climb down to the plains of the steppe, and begin their careful, fraught passage through a battlefield of a war that had waged on long after all the human participants had been killed.

On the fourth night they came upon the gate. Serah had thought locating the gate would be difficult, but the gate acted like a beacon, leading the two of them onward. Its light was a welcome sight in the darkness, even if Serah felt a little like she was a moth being drawn toward a flame. Their steps became more sure as they could see clearer, and her spirits felt lighter the closer they came.

Then they drew close enough to see the giants.

There were two, and unfortunately both of them had the same colour crystal on the tops of their heads. This meant that they had been created to fight together against a shared opponent, to co-ordinate their attacks. There was no chance the giants would turn on each other, no hope that Serah and Noel could slip past unnoticed.

To compound matters, there was a loud crack from overhead. Serah did not spare a moment to look up and back towards Cocoon. She couldn’t. She had to trust Lightning, and that meant believing her when she said that this gate would open for them without an artefact. If she looked at the pillar and saw it was starting to shatter then she might not have faith in her sister that she truly could save the future.

They had to get to the gate. That was what mattered. If that meant they had to challenge two giants at once, so be it.

She looked across at Noel.

“Ready?” she asked.

He adjusted the grip on his two swords, backhanded and ready to strike. He nodded. “Always.”

They started the assault by Serah firing an arrow at the giant closest to them, Noel following it up with a fire spell. For its size, the giant moved frighteningly quickly, covering the ground between them at a rapid pace. It raised its fist to smash Serah and Noel to the ground, and the two of them split up and rolled out of the way in different directions. The giant took a moment to recover and Noel took the opportunity to dart in and strike at it twice with his blades. It swiped at him, and he dodged, his movements as balletic as any dancer.

Serah provided cover for him until he retreated back with a continuous barrage of magic: fire, electricity, water, air. He returned the favour when she flanked it from the other side, striking repeatedly with her bowsword while he flung magic from the other side. They traded off like this, one keeping the giant distracted while the other carved it up on the other side. It was a pattern that they were familiar with by now.

Then the second giant attacked.

Serah felt rather than saw its fist descend and did not have time to avoid its strike. She stopped casting magic, shifted her feet, and braced herself for impact. The fist came down with brutal force. Every part of her ached, and she stumbled. She did not fall. She considered that a success.

She felt the cool, refreshing sensation of healing magic washing over her skin. Her vision cleared.

“Focus on one at a time!” Noel yelled, resuming his magical assault on the first giant.

“Got it!” Serah yelled back, attacking the first giant with her bowsword. She dodged its swipe and repositioned herself away from the second giant, her attention split between watching its approach and watching the first giant. She wondered how her sister managed to do it.

The two of them traded off magic and swordplay, dodging swipes and strikes from both giants, until finally the first giant staggered under the force of Noel’s ice attack. Serah and Noel both rushed in and attacked. Under their two-pronged attack, the giant staggered and fell to the ground, where it twitched and spasmed.

They then turned their attention on the remaining giant. Despite the fact that there was only one now instead of two, they were tired; Serah ached all over from where the giant had hit her, and Noel had been swiped a few times with painful force. They were battered, bruised and bleeding, while the other giant was still uninjured.

First, time to turn the tables. Serah cast spells that sapped its strength, weakened its defence, and blinded it, furiously casting spell after spell to make the battle a fairer one. Noel deliberately attracted its attention while she did that. Then it was her turn to draw the monster’s attention while Noel cast spells on the two of them to make them faster, stronger, harder to hit.

None of these spells would make it a truly fair battle. But it would make it fairer.

That done, they attacked without hesitation, alternating magic and sword strikes, much like they had before. The giant was faster than the ones they had fought before, and Serah avoided more than a few strikes by a matter of inches. She hadn’t needed to brace for its strike again, though Noel had been hit twice. She had spared whatever healing magic she could before resuming the assault.

Practice told them that to fight a giant was to be relentless in their offence. A defensive stance was only useful when they were about to be hit and couldn’t get out of the way, but the quicker they threw the monster off balance, the better.

It was a battle strategy that was growing on Serah as she danced out of the way and then flung an ice spell at the giant so that Noel could come in and attack with his blades.

Then it brought both fists up with breathtaking speed. Serah didn’t have time to move. Nor did Noel.

“Get ready!” Noel called, not that Serah needed the reminder. She reached inside herself for the magic to withstand the giant’s assault, magic to allow her to stand tall after it hit. She knew from firsthand experience how much the strike would hurt, but there would be a window afterward to attack the giant. She just had to focus on that.

The fist came down.

Serah’s expectations of the pain were not exaggerated. She staggered, breath sawing in her chest, after the strike. Nothing seemed broken, thankfully, but she _hurt_ , all the way down to the bone. Everything felt bruised and battered.

But Noel had his swords up, so Serah brought her bowsword up. One last push.

“Let’s go!” she called to Noel, her hand glittering with magical energy.

“Let’s take it down!” Noel called back, springing on the balls of his feet toward the giant as it lumbered and staggered, trying to recover its balance. Noel’s sword strikes and Serah’s magic kept the giant off balance until finally it toppled over. It was time for Serah to strike and she did, alternating sides with Noel. She blinked away the sweat and blood that trickled into her eyes as she attacked. Time enough to deal with that later.

Finally, the giant fell to its knees in defeat. It struggled to rise — once, twice, three times.

Noel and Serah exchanged exhausted, triumphant grins as the giant fell a fourth time.

And then, as the giant fell a final time, its arm flung out and clipped an unprepared Noel, knocking him to the ground. He did not get up.

Serah stared at him in shock.

Then the crystal pillar holding Cocoon up cracked again, a deep, bone rattling crack that went on and on. Serah turned around and at first didn’t comprehend what she saw.

The pillar holding up Cocoon was distorted and lopsided. There was a flaw on its side, a deep line that Serah forced herself to see. A fissure. A crack. Cocoon was about to fall. They had not saved Cocoon. Crystal sand started to fall from it like hail, small at first and then larger shards of crystal hurtling towards the decaying land.

“Noel!” Serah screamed, falling to her knees beside him. “Noel, _get up_!”

The crystal pillar was disintegrating, spraying crystal shards all around the plains, Noel was lying at her feet, and she did not have an artefact to unlock the gate. What she did have though was faith. Lightning would unlock the gate. They just had to help themselves enough to get to the gate, and Lightning would save them.

She did not have time to despair. Lightning wouldn’t give up, and so Serah wouldn’t either.

She shook Noel again. She cast revival magic again and again, willing Noel to get up, to open his eyes, to do _anything_ other than just lie there. Finally, he opened his eyes. Blinked dazedly at her.

That was good enough for Serah. She put his arm around her shoulders, and pushed herself upright, pulling Noel up with her. Her back and legs screamed in pain as his weight fell on her. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the gate.

“Come on, Noel,” she cajoled. Noel staggered, then righted himself. He looked around.

“The pillar!” he groaned.

“We can fix it!” Serah replied urgently. “We just have to get to the gate.”

“Yeah, and Lightning’ll save us,” Noel said. He leaned on Serah for balance still, but he was moving more freely. They couldn’t run, but they could walk.

As the crystal pillar broke around them, they reached the gate. _Please, Lightning, if you’re there, help us!_ Serah thought, blinking away tears. It couldn’t end like this. It _couldn’t_.

It didn’t. The gate’s core started to spin faster as Serah and Noel made their limping approach to it, light growing stronger. Mog hovered around Noel’s shoulder, encouraging him to walk faster, waving his wand insistently as he urged them to run. Serah could feel the pull of the gate on her, urging her forward and guiding her steps. They were so close to their goal.

Four steps to go.

Three steps left.

Two steps.

One.

* * *

 Serah and Noel materialised outside the gate was in a tangle of limbs. Noel had lost consciousness sometime during their passage in the Historia Crux, and Serah had scooped him up by the armpits to keep him close to her out of fear that he would slip away and she’d never find him again. She supposed that this was a silly fear, but she’d lost so many people in her life already thanks to the vagaries of time that she didn’t want to lose Noel as well.

Sarah raised her head and squinted. When she had gone through the gate with Noel, her head had ached with fatigue. Now it was clear, though she still felt a little shaky and light-headed. She must have fallen asleep just as they arrived, she thought, or maybe just before. She wasn’t quite sure which it was. Whatever it had been, it didn’t seem to have harmed her.

She untangled herself from Noel carefully, anxious not to jar his wounds or to move her own too much. Once her arm was free, she healed her own injuries, keeping an ear out for sounds of anything approaching. There was a low hum, regular and familiar, at the edge of hearing, but nothing like the footfall of a person or a monster. Definitely nothing like a giant. If anything, it sounded like the hum of an air conditioning unit, and that would explain the cool air against her skin. Wherever they were, it must be somewhere with people.

Her own injuries healed, Serah extracted herself from under Noel, wincing every time he shifted or made a noise of distress. Asleep, he wasn’t able to tough out the pain from his injuries. He looked so vulnerable and young like this, so much so that she was able to believe that he truly was only eighteen and younger than herself. She healed his injuries quickly, clucking her tongue at how painful some of the injuries were.

Mog, it seemed, was also uninjured, though Serah wasn’t sure if healing spells would even work on a moogle if he was hurt. He was exhausted, and she tucked him close to Noel.

That taken care of, Serah pushed herself up into a sitting position with the heels of her hands and looked around.

They were in a place she had never seen before. The room was suffused with a dim blue light from the two curved monitors mounted on the curved tables facing the corner of the room where the gate was located. The monitors were as wide as Serah’s outstretched arms and had some white script glowing on it faintly. Other than the two desks, interestingly without chairs, and the gate, the only thing left in the room was a door, currently closed. The walls reflected the light oddly, and it took Serah a bemused moment of squinting to understand that this was because they were made of some kind of metal.

That startled her, because the last time she had seen metal used in this way was on Cocoon before it fell, in building offices and industrial buildings. These were still built with metal on Gran Pulse, but it was a kind of rough-hewn charm that made it clear that humanity was still learning to build things without the aid of the fal’Cie.

She wondered if it was a military facility. She knew so little about how the gates operated, but Lightning had sent the two of them here for a reason. There must be a connection somehow between the army of giants that threatened to topple the pillar and this place, and it would make sense that they were controlled, at least initially, by some kind of military facility.

Serah shivered. Perhaps it had to do with the Purge, much like the epitaph that Alyssa had asked them to find before Noel and Serah had found themselves flung forward in time. It had been three years since her discovery of a fal’Cie triggered the deaths of so many people, and it remained difficult to live with that knowledge. Out at New Bodhum, Serah had been sheltered from a lot of the fallout from Cocoon’s Fall, but it was possible that over time discontent could result in all-out war.

“Well,” she said aloud, shaking her head to dispel her thoughts. “I’m not learning anything sitting here waiting.”

She pushed herself to her feet, stretching out stiff muscles. Healing magic could do a great deal with healing injuries, but it always left her muscles a little stiff afterward. Not painful, but like she had had a good workout. Whatever was in the tower, Serah thought she could handle it. She had her magic, after all. That had to count for something! Besides, she couldn’t in good conscience wake Noel and Mog up.

“Sweet dreams,” she said before she opened the door and went out into the corridor. She closed it behind her, and smiled ruefully when she heard the lock click. Serah didn’t think that Lightning would forget to check the door before closing it. Fortunately, Noel would let her in when she knocked later on after he woke up.

The corridor was filled with doors upon doors, all of them apparently closed and, as Serah discovered when she tested them, locked. Some had windows set into the door itself, and when Serah peered inside she saw rooms much like the one that she and Noel had woken up in. She couldn’t see any signs of people, or the kind of infrastructure she would expect from a military organisation.

She huffed a sigh. Maybe she should have checked the computer terminals in their room first before she went out to explore. She might not have learned all that much about where they were or when, but she wasn’t learning anything at all at the moment. She resolved to turn back after she had checked the next few doors.

They were locked too, and she frowned at them in annoyance.

“Serah!”

Serah turned around and saw Noel jogging toward her, with Mog bobbing along a foot above Noel’s shoulder.

“You’re awake! How are you feeling?” Serah asked.

“All right. Bit sore, but it could definitely be worse. I think I know who to thank for that.”

“No problem,” Serah said. “Now that we’re … well, we can’t really say we’re _safe_ , can we?”

“Saf _er_ , at least,” Noel offered, gesturing with one hand.

“Yeah.” Serah said. She looked around them for a moment, looking for clues as to their location. “I wonder what Lightning wants us to do here?”

Noel shrugged. “No idea.”

“Well,” Serah said, pressing her finger to her chin as she spoke. “I suppose the first thing to do is find out when we are. And then we can pick your brains to find out what you remember happening here.”

“I’ll see what I can remember,” Noel said. “No promises though. I learned this stuff as a kid, and I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have.”

Serah nodded, and tried another door. Noel tried the one on the other side of the corridor. The handles rattled, but didn’t open. Much like the earlier ones, they were both locked.

They continued the process down the corridor, testing six doors each. All of them were locked. Serah stopped after the sixth, and turned to face Noel.

“Noel? Do you think the pillar really will be okay?”

“Lightning wouldn’t send us to a place that would make it worse.”

It was hard to imagine the pillar being in worse shape than in the time they had left, but Serah conceded the point. Noel had, after all, come from a time where Cocoon _fell_.

“That’s true.” Serah sighed. “I just wish she’d told us what we were meant to do here. At least when we were fighting giants, we knew what we were meant to do. Even if it was hopeless.”

“Next time you have one of those dreams, you should interrogate her,” Noel suggested. “Have her give us some clearer instructions next time.”

“Next time _you_ can have one of those dreams,” Serah retorted. “I’ll tell her to bother you.”

Noel looked like he was about to make a retort of his own. Then he stopped, cocking his head and looking abstracted. He put his finger up to his lips to forestall Serah saying anything. Serah listened as well, holding her breath. She could hear soft, irregular sounds, like how Lightning would walk around their house when she first started at the Guardian Corps and was learning to walk silently. Someone was nearby, and coming their way.

She looked at Noel. He nodded. Both of them drew their weapons and moved down the corridor.

Serah rounded the next corner, bowsword in hand, and was confronted with a member of the Academy pointing a pistol at her. She froze. So did Noel beside her, swords held at the ready.

The three of them stared at one another, waiting for one of them to move.

The Academy staff member broke the impasse first, lowering the pistol. “Serah? Is it really you?”

There weren’t many people who would recognise Serah on sight. There was only one with white hair and green eyes, though when she had last seen him he had been lanky with the beginnings of his final growth spurt. It seemed that he had finished it in the years that she’d been away, growing into an adult older than her. It was strange and disorienting. How could it be that everyone had aged without her?

“Hope?” She let Mog return to his true form and giggled nervously. Noel also sheathed his weapons. “Wow, I never expected to see you here!”

“Likewise,” Hope said. “But now isn’t the time to catch up. There’s a safe space nearby where I can tell the two of you what’s going on.”

“Wait a second,” Noel broke in. “Why aren’t you there? And who _are_ you?”

“I came here because I saw intruders on this level,” Hope said. “As for the rest … that really should wait until we’re safe. This way, please.”

He turned on his heel and strode off. Serah started to go after him, but was stopped by Noel speaking.

“Who is he, Serah?”

Serah turned back. Noel was frowning suspiciously after Hope’s retreating back, arms folded.

“He’s an old friend of my sister’s,” Serah said. “Of course, the last time I saw him, he was sixteen, but …” She laughed helplessly. “I guess that happens when you go time travelling.”

Noel sighed in relief, arms unfolding and he stretched out one arm, rotating it around to loosen up a tight muscle. “That’s all right then! A friend of Lightning’s a friend of mine.”

“Let’s go!” Serah said, setting off after Hope, Noel close behind her.

* * *

Hope’s secure hiding place was a room much like the room that Serah and Noel had found themselves in when they first arrived in this timeline: dimly lit from the two large monitors mounted on curved desks, a discoloured patch that Serah had initially dismissed as being a trick of the light, walls and floor made with the same metallic material. There were of course differences. Hope’s room did not contain a time gate, and the only way to access Hope’s room was through two secure sterilisation airlocks, accessible by palm print.

“This used to be a temporal analysis lab,” Hope explained as he passed them through the second airlock. “Hopefully it will be again soon.”

“The Academy’s still studying time?” Serah wondered.

“We still don’t know enough of how it works. The gates, the distortions, the paradoxes …” Hope slanted a look back at the two of them. “The disappearances.”

As the three of them passed through the second airlock, Hope closed it behind them, then turned to face them.

“There, we should be safe now. At least for the moment.”

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Noel said.

Hope nodded at Noel. “I promised you an explanation, Noel. I’m Hope Estheim, Director of the Academy. You’re currently located in the basement of the central processing tower for the Academy, Augusta Tower, and the year is 13 AF.” He added ruefully, “You really aren’t seeing the Academy at its best, I’m afraid to say.”

“How do you know my name?” Noel asked. “You clearly know both of us, but I’ve never met you at all.”

“I know _of_ you,” Hope corrected. “The two of you disappeared in 5AF after challenging a creature called ‘Atlas’ that, through the paradox effect, travelled back to a time before it was created.”

“That would certainly be memorable,” Serah commented. “Poor Alyssa. I think we gave her the fright of her life. I hope she’s okay now.”

“She’s still an employee of the Academy,” Hope offered. “She’s one of our mathematicians, though I don’t work with her personally.”

“Well, that’s good,” Serah said. “She seemed really interested in the Bresha Ruins when we saw her. I’m glad she still is involved in that somehow.”

Noel hadn’t said anything in response to this, which Serah thought was unusual. Noel always had something to say, as if he’d lived so long without anyone else around that he had saved up all his words for when he met another person, regardless of how ridiculous they sounded.

“Noel?”

“I know you,” Noel said. He had been frowning at Hope during the whole conversation. “Don’t you become the leader of humanity?”

Serah blinked in surprise. Then she was more surprised that Hope was _not_ surprised.

“I wouldn’t describe myself that way,” Hope said carefully.

“Right right, but that’s not what matters,” Noel interrupted, waving his hand in dismissal. “It’s about how other people see you, and I bet they listen to you a lot.”

“I suppose they do,” Hope said slowly. “The Academy advises political bodies about scientific solutions, but we don’t take a leading role.”

“That’s what I mean,” Noel said. “You die here, I’m sure of it, and that starts the war that creates Atlas and all the other giants.”

“Oh, I see,” Serah said. “So if we make sure that Hope gets out of here safely, then the war will never happen.”

“Then Atlas and the other giants won’t ever exist so they won’t weaken the pillar.”

“And because the pillar doesn’t weaken, Cocoon doesn’t fall, and everyone lives.”

“Exactly.”

Hope had been watching the two of them bounce ideas off one another, and he raised a hand. “Forgive me for interrupting, but — I die here?”

“In my timeline, yes,” Noel said. “But we’ve decided that that’s not a timeline that we think should have happened.”

“We think there’s a true timeline,” Serah explained. “One where Lightning doesn’t disappear and Cocoon doesn’t fall from the sky.”

“One where everyone lives,” Noel added.

“I see,” Hope said. “And the timeline you wish to see … it’s one where this war never happens.”

“Yeah, because you don’t die. Your death starts it all off,” Noel explained.

“All right,” Hope agreed, which was easier than Serah thought it would be. “What do you want to do now?”

“That’s easy enough,” Serah said. “Right, Noel?”

“Yeah!” Noel said, gesturing with his hand. “We just have to make sure you get out of here before we leave.”

“Are you certain?” Hope frowned, sounding troubled. “I have an artefact. You could use it to escape here. There’s a gate on the floor above us that has the same temporal signature as this artefact. I’m positive it’s the key, but … it seems that I’m not the one to unlock it. It must be you.”

“No.” Serah shook her head. “Absolutely not. We’re not leaving here until you’re safe.”

“I can’t say that I’m not grateful but …” Hope trailed off.

Serah’s heart caught in her throat. “What is it? Is something the matter?”

He took a breath. “This is not the true timeline. You could just be wasting time on a timeline that shouldn’t exist.”

“Well, we don’t really _know_ that…” Noel interjected. “We don’t really know what the true timeline is until we get there.”

“No, I think we do,” Hope said firmly. “In the true timeline there wouldn’t be a war about whether we should rely on the fal’Cie. The fact that there could be one in this timeline means that this isn’t the true timeline.”

“That might be right,” Serah conceded. “But I don’t think we get to the true timeline all at once. I think we get there one step at a time, unravelling paradoxes as we go. If it was as simple as just undoing one mistake then Lightning would have done it by now.”

Hope looked unconvinced.

“Besides,” Serah added, playing her trump card. “Lightning sent us here. I doubt she did it just to get an artefact.”

“Yeah,” Noel chimed in. “Sure, we need the artefact to get to where we need to go next, but Lightning not expecting us to help an old friend? Not her style.”

“No, I don’t think she would leave someone to die,” Hope agreed. “That’s Light for you.” He still looked troubled, green eyes dark and shadowed. “Serah, what do you think happens to the timelines born from the paradox?”

Serah thought that the answer had been obvious: once the paradox was resolved the timelines resolved into one. She hadn’t thought of how that might occur, as she hadn’t really had time. Now, confronted the question, Serah realised that she didn’t really know at all. “I … I don’t know. Do you?”

“No,” Hope said. “I have a theory, but …” He shook his head. “Never mind, it’s not important.”

“Okay?” Serah said. She was pretty sure that it was not unimportant at all, but Hope had a similar set to his jaw that Lightning had when she would not say something. She didn’t think she’d be that successful at getting an answer out of him if she asked. She never had with Lightning.

“Right now, what’s important are the other intruders in the tower,” Hope went on.

“Right,” Noel agreed. “Do you know anything about them?”

Hope shook his head. “No, nothing. That doesn’t mean a lot. There were a lot of people unhappy with Cocoon’s fall, and the decisions made by the Academy afterward. They could be coming here to kill me because I’m the Director, or because I was a l’Cie.” He sighed. “I hadn’t considered that it might be because of something I haven’t done yet.”

“How did they get in here?” Serah said. “Wouldn’t a place like this be locked down?”

“It is,” Hope agreed. “I assume they gained access using an Academy keycard.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes,” Hope said. He turned on a computer monitor. “I’ve been tracking them with this.”

‘This’ was initially a screen of code, but after Hope typed on the keyboard briefly, it changed to what Serah recognised as a floor plan. Specifically, according to the notation on the bottom right of the screen, it was a floor plan for the floor above them. The floor was laid out like a checkerboard, with sixteen rooms spread out evenly across the floor, separated by corridors that ran between them as well as one that circled the perimeter of the the floor, and centred around the stairs that spiralled around the centre of Augusta Tower. The rooms marked 4, 11, 12, and 15 had a number of dots clustered inside them, presumably people. That much she understood.

She wasn’t sure what to make of the coloured blocks interspersed throughout the plan. They didn’t seem to follow any real pattern that Serah could see at first. Then she studied their arrangement more closely, and thought she might understand. From the way the blocks were set up, she supposed that they were security checkpoints. That would explain why the side where all the people were had fewer checkpoints; whoever had erected the checkpoints could have used them to herd people into rooms away from the exit.

“So how do we get out of here?”

“Your gate is located in the same room as the emergency exit here,” Hope said, pointing to a room on the map marked as 9. “Each block is a security cordon. They can be lifted in two ways: by me here, or at the checkpoint for each cordon.”

“I bet it’s not going to be as simple as just letting you do your thing,” Noel commented.

“No. There are security bots throughout the floor, and they aren’t responsive to my commands. I imagine they’ve been hacked by our intruders. You’ll have to protect me while I lift each cordon, and close them behind us after we’ve passed through.”

“That makes sense,” Serah said. “After all, we can’t unlock the whole floor. That wouldn’t be very safe.”

“Once we’re out, we’ll leave the intruders to the appropriate authorities,” Hope continued. “There’s nothing in the rooms they’re in that is classified. Any questions?”

Mog, who had been studying one of the other terminals with avid curiosity, said plaintively, “Mog is so thirsty, kupo!”

Serah laughed sheepishly. “I could do with a drink too.”

“Me too,” Noel added.

“Not a problem,” Hope said. He manipulated the keyboard, changing the display to a floorplan that, with some squinting, Serah could recognise as the one they were on. She smiled to see that the four of them were shown on the map as well. Hope looked at the map quickly and nodded. “There’s a kitchenette on this floor. It’s spartan, but I think we can give you water at the very least. It looks like the path’s clear.”

“I’ll go too, kupo!”

“Noel and I will stay here then,” Serah said. “Take care of Hope now, Mog!”

“Kupooo~!” Mog sang cheerfully.

“Well, that went well,” Noel said after Mog and Hope left.

“It did, better than I expected.” Serah said. “Still, it’s so _strange_. He’s so much older now. I wonder … if we ran into NORA would they be older too?”

“Most likely.”

“I guess that’s what happens when you travel through time. Seeing people you used to know, older and changed.”

“Maybe it’s easier for me,” Noel said. “After all, there’s no one for me to see.”

Serah thought that was terribly sad. It was strange, imagining how people might have moved on after she had gone, their lives continuing onwards while her timeline remained on hold, but she wouldn’t give up the disconcerting alienation for the loneliness that Noel must feel. After all, he had flung himself back in time in order to remake his future into one with people in it.

“No,” she said. “No, I think that must be worse.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. When we’re done, I won’t be the last anymore. There’ll be people around with me.”

That, Serah wasn’t quite sure of, but had not wanted to ask Hope in case he answered. She knew what she thought the true timeline should be: Lightning standing on the plains of Gran Pulse, smiling at Snow and Serah and giving her blessing for them to be married, walking to the emergency shelters being set up by the Cavalry. Maybe she would be married in the spring, flowers in her hair and her feet bare on the sand, Snow in a suit that he kept adjusting to make it sit better on him. Her future would be one of simple happiness.

What she didn’t know was where Noel would fit in with this. Would he belong to their time? In Serah’s mind, she thought he should. Ever since Snow left, Noel had been the only one who believed her. He believed in her. He wanted to protect her, but he also wanted her to protect _herself_ , and that was far different to how NORA had treated her.

“Well,” she said, smiling at him. “We’ll just have to make sure your future’s a good one.”

“And that means making sure Hope doesn’t die here.”

“I wonder why he tried to convince us to not do it?”

“Who knows? He must have a reason.”

Serah frowned. She thought there might be one reason. “Hope’s a smart guy. He’s probably worked out that if we change his past, then the person he is now will change.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I think I do,” Serah said. “It makes sense, you see? When we change the future, we have to change the past that leads to that future. We won’t change, but everyone else will. They have to.”

“We’ll be the only ones who’ll remember the other timelines.”

“Yeah,” Serah said. She didn’t know what else she could say. If she thought it was a terrible thing to be responsible for remembering the lives of people who never were, then how bad was it for Lightning, who had seen all of history and had done it all alone? “But at least it’s both of us together. It’s easier shared with two.”

She was saved from the awkwardness her statement might have caused by the return of Hope and Mog: Hope holding two bottles of water and Mog bobbing around merrily over his shoulder, being more in the way of Hope’s progress than any form of helping. Hope handed the bottles of water over to Serah and Noel, and the moment was lost. Thankfully.

The water slipped down her throat, cool and clean-tasting, without the bitter aftertaste of the water she and Noel had drunk while avoiding the giants, and Serah had to remind herself not to be greedy. It wouldn’t help if she threw up the water after drinking it. She forced herself to sip at it slowly, savouring the taste.

“Thanks,” Serah said to Hope after finishing her bottle.

“I’m ready to go when everyone else is,” added Noel. “Just say the word.”

* * *

 First were the stairs, a utilitarian metal staircase with a handrail that gleamed silver and clearly had never had any chewing gum stuck to it. Serah stood at the bottom of the staircase and gazed up the stairwell, captivated by the spiral of stairs that reached up as far as she could see.

“Wow,” Noel said. “That’s a lot of stairs. This building must be huge.”

“How many floors are there?”

“Of stairs? Ten,” Hope said. “Underground, that is. There’s fifty-two above ground as well.”

Serah could see out of the corner of her eye Noel trying to measure how big that would be with his hands. “Are all buildings in this time this big?” he asked finally.

Serah shrugged. “Nothing on Gran Pulse is in the time I’m from.”

“It is the tallest building on Gran Pulse … for the moment, anyway,” Hope said.

“Why do you need so many floors?” Noel wanted to know.

“Operational requirements,” Hope replied, which was such a non-answer that Serah made a face at it.

“Well, shall we?” she said, gesturing at the staircase. “At least we’re only going up to the next floor.”

“I’ll go first,” Noel said, already starting to bound up the stairs. “Hope, you stay between Serah and me.”

Serah and Hope followed.

“I meant to ask earlier but I forgot until now,” Serah said to Hope as they went up the stairs. “I didn’t know you knew how to use a gun.”

“I’m not very good but needs must,” Hope said, shrugging. “I’d rather use my boomerang but it’s not especially practical in these narrow corridors.” He smiled wryly. “It’s been a while since I had to fight for my life. I’m out of practice.”

“That’s all right,” Serah said cheerfully. “We’re pretty _in_ practice, what with fighting giants and all.”

“I’ll leave the fighting to you two then,” Hope said. “I imagine I’ll have my hands full with the security checkpoints.”

As she reached the landing for the floor, Serah let out a breath. She turned on her heel. The entrances to the corridors to her left and behind her were blocked off with a security gate: a brilliantly yellow light that made the hairs on her arm stand up as she walked over and put up her hand near it. Even from a foot away she could feel the static charge from the wall. Chances were that if she put her hand on it, she’d regret it.

Noel was standing guard on the corridor leading to the right, and Serah joined him. If she remembered the map correctly, that corridor led to the highest concentration of infiltrators to Augusta Tower, and so any attack would likely come from that section.

Recessed into the wall was a large panel the length of Serah’s arm, glowing faintly yellow, indicating that the security wall was down here. There was other information too, to do with air quality and the like, but that was the important information. Her weapon in hand, Serah waited for the attack.

She didn’t have long to wait.

She could hear the creak of Hope’s leather gloves as he stretched out his hands, and then a few moments later the first onslaught of security bots began. Between the two of them, Noel and Serah acted as their own security wall, parrying attacks with blades and freezing the bots’ progress dead in its tracks. Literally, after a few minutes; they learned very quickly that the bots were vulnerable to cold and electricity.

The second onslaught was worse. The wreckage from the first bots meant that it was dangerous to move forward to press the defence, and that only worsened as Serah and Noel destroyed more bots.

“I hope the Academy doesn’t issue us a bill!” she quipped to Noel as they teamed up to destroy a particularly tenacious servitor bot.

“They should be paying _us_ ,” Noel retorted as he hurled an ice spell at it. The bot’s casing iced over with frost. “We are rescuing their Director, after all!”

“That’s right!” Serah exclaimed as her thunder spell struck the bot’s casing, causing the ice to melt and intensifying the electric shock. “We should be the ones issuing a bill.”

“It’s down,” Hope said, having either not heard or choosing to ignore Serah and Noel’s conversation. He took off at a sprint across the corridor in front of them, Noel hot on his heels. Serah fired another volley of arrows into the wave of security bots in order to buy them time, and then it was her turn to turn and run while Noel covered her retreat with magic.

A heartbeat after Serah crossed the corridor, the security cordon went up again in a flash of hard light. Serah was so close to it that the hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she could feel the uncomfortable twitchy feeling of a static charge with nowhere to go. She touched the wall to dissipate the charge.

The next part she knew would be the hardest. Once they rounded the corner to the outside corridor, anyone who had been in Room 4 could see them. If they could see them, they could send security bots after them or, worse, come after them themselves. Once they were into the secure area, though, it would be clear until Hope had to drop it again before they entered Room 9 and could escape.

She looked across at Noel. He pointed at himself and then gestured to the far side of the corridor. Serah nodded and took up position opposite him, both of them facing away from their next destination, weapons at the ready.

Initially their progress was slow and cautious: Serah and Noel bracketing Hope, watching out for any attacks from security bots. It made sense that if any were to come they would primarily come from the other side of the room, where Hope had trapped them, so that they could follow in the bots’ wake. That’s what she would do, if she was trying to take over a tower. Not that she would, but it made more sense that way.

No bots came out, and Serah thought she might have underestimated how difficult this part would have been.

Then the security bots came up from behind them.

Serah whipped around on the ball of her foot, firing a volley of arrows into the security bots approaching Hope. Hope, realising what she was doing, dashed toward the control panel set into the wall to deactivate the security wall, Serah covering his run with arrows and magic.

Once Hope was at the panel, Noel and Serah closed in behind him, standing guard. This was a more difficult task than the last time. For one there were a lot more security bots to contend with. While the bots went down with ice or thunder magic easily enough, there were always more to take their places. Serah lost count of the number of spells she had hurled at the security bots. Once it might have been exhausting, but Serah had stood on the plains of Gran Pulse and fought giants. Security bots were an annoyance, albeit, a persistent one.

Why did the Academy have security bots that could be hacked like this? And why were there so _many_? The Academy’s own security was more of a danger to them than anything else.

“Can you do that a little faster?” Noel asked as he blocked the strike of one of the security bots before striking it down with his sword.

“Not really,” Hope said, voice abstracted as he typed on the panel mounted on the wall. “I have to be accurate as well as fast otherwise … well, we wouldn’t like the consequences.”

Serah immediately wondered what the consequences were, and was momentarily annoyed that Hope hadn’t elaborated further. Her imagination was surely more creative than what the technology of the Academy could achieve.

Instead, she flung more magic at security bots, forcing herself to focus on the battle in front of her. What mattered was keeping the bots at bay. Four rounds became five. Six. Eight. Ten.

“It’s down,” Hope said urgently, already across the line where the security wall had been just before. Noel and Serah stepped backward across the line, and the security wall sprung back up into place, leaving behind ten security bots and a great deal of twisted and burned metal. The security bots beat at the security wall with their appendages, sparks flying wildly as they did so.

“You are sure that won’t break, right?” Noel said warily. “It is just light after all.”

“Don’t let its appearance fool you,” Hope said. “It may look like light, but the security walls have been holding up against their assaults for several days now.”

“That’s the hard part done, isn’t it?” Serah said as they walked left and walked down to where she remembered Room 9 was located. “We just have one more checkpoint to go, and there’s no real risk of any security bots there, right?”

“Probably not,” Hope said. “There might be a few that managed to infiltrate the area while the security wall was down, but nothing like what you were fighting before.”

“That’s a relief!” Noel said. “So you’re almost safe and we are almost at our gate.”

“Yes, it won’t be long now, and you can get back to saving the timeline,” Hope said. “You’ll have to tell me where you go next.”

“We’ll be sure to try and find you,” Serah promised. “I just hope it’s a you from after you’ve met us, and not before.”

“I imagine it would be tiresome explaining yourself repeatedly,” Hope agreed. “I’ll try to remember after you’re gone for as long as I can.”

It was a strange idea. Serah wasn’t sure what to make of it. She slanted a look at Noel, who looked about as nonplussed as she was. They exchanged shrugs. Time enough to work out what was going on with that later.

The last checkpoint was, after the previous two, quite anticlimactic: a mere lowering of the security wall, and then opening and locking the door behind them for their destination. Serah had expected something more difficult such as a monster from another time. Instead, it was a matter of walking over and unlocking the door.

From the faces that Noel was making, he too felt that the whole thing was a disappointment.

“Shh,” she whispered to him. “We’ll fight something huge next time, I promise.”

Noel grinned at her. “You’re on.”

Hope looked back at them, bemused, and shook his head.

Room 9 was very similar to the room that Serah had found herself in when she had first arrived in this time period. There were two monitors mounted on curved tables, and she wondered whether every single room in the Academy was required to have those ubiquitous two monitors. Perhaps it did. She would have to remember to ask later. The gate was in the far corner of the room, responding to their presence … or rather, to the artefact Hope had said he had.

This room had, however, a panel recessed into the floor of the room, large enough for one person to open and presumably climb down into.

“Where does this go?” Serah wondered.

“Didn’t we just come up a floor?” Noel added. “Seems a bit strange we went up just for you to go back down again.”

“It doesn’t connect to the floor below,” Hope explained. “It skips the floor entirely, and goes beneath it, to a secure location. From there, I just have to wait until I’m collected by security. I guess I could catch up on my reading.” He didn’t sound particularly pleased by this. Serah couldn’t really blame him. She’d been saved by others often enough to chafe at it, and Hope had been involved in saving himself since he travelled with her sister at fourteen.

“Meanwhile, we’ll be going through the gate,” Serah said. “Are you sure you don’t want to try again?”

“No,” Hope said, shaking his head. “If I am meant to travel to the future, it is not by this gate. Here. You’ll need this.” He reached into the pouch strapped to his hip and pulled out an artefact. It was a strange, translucent twist of time, one that looked like it turned in on itself somehow, and as Serah accepted it, she discovered it was surprisingly heavy.

Though, in a way, it was the key to a future without giants tearing the planet to pieces. Perhaps it should be heavy. It was their hope for a better future after all.

“Take care, Hope,” Serah said. “We’ll see you soon.”

“I know you will,” Hope replied. “It was good to see you again. And to meet you, Noel. I wish the two of you all the best.” He popped the hatch, exposing a ladder, and climbed down onto it. “When you see Lightning again, tell her ‘thank you’ from me.” He reached up and pulled the hatch closed after him.

“Job well done, I guess,” Noel said.

“Maybe we should have gone after him…?” Serah mused. “We could have waited until he got picked up.”

“Maybe,” Noel said. “But I think he’ll be fine. The biggest danger was from the security bots in the end, and he said he’d be going to a secure location.”

“All right,” said Serah. “We’ll know in a minute if it worked or not.” She hefted the artefact, and the glowing centre of the gate whirled faster in response. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah. Let’s see what the future brings.”

“Or the past,” Serah pointed out. She blinked, and the gate took them.

* * *

 When Serah opened her eyes again, the two of them were where they had fought Atlas. Or at least, she thought it was where they had fought Atlas. There was no sign of their terrible battle against him. No shattered walls, no broken buildings … there wasn’t even a mark on the ground from where Atlas had battered them from overhead with his fists. The sky was clear and sunny, and it was a beautiful day.

She wondered what happened to the rain. An unexpected effect of the paradox, perhaps? She made a note to ask Noel about it later, if he knew anything about it.

“Where did you go?” Alyssa’s voice crackled in their communicator, fretful even through the static. “You fought Atlas and then just … _disappeared_ … for a moment there. And now there’s all these strange readings on you.”

“It’s nothing,” Serah said, pulling a face at Noel. Noel grinned but fortunately said nothing. “Just a little paradox we had to sort out. So where did you see the Atlas controlling device?”

“What?” Alyssa exclaimed. “What device? You’re looking for an epitaph. … You did remember that, didn’t you?”

“Just testing,” Serah said quickly.

“Don’t! You scared me. I thought you’d really forgotten about it.”

“We didn’t forget,” Noel said, looking at Serah ruefully. “We’ll keep an eye out for it. Just up ahead, right?”

“That’s right. I’ll wait until you find it.”

There was a click of Alyssa closing the communication line, and Serah released the breath she was holding.

“We did it,” Noel said. “We really did it.”

“We really did,” Serah said. “We actually changed the future.” She laughed. “I was so sure that we were meant to die there. Now, let’s fix the timeline, for good, so no one dies.”

“Do you think we’ll see Hope again?”

“Probably,” Serah said, with confidence. “He said that he’d remember us for as long as he could, so we have to make sure he’s not waiting too long.” She wondered how they would find him again. The gates didn’t come with destinations marked on them, after all. Each place was a blind adventure. She would just have to trust in Lightning to guide them all home.

Secure in that knowledge, Serah strode out ahead to where Alyssa had told them the epitaph was, Noel by her side.


End file.
